Jeremy Corbyn Would Consider Introducing Women-Only Train Carriages At Night
Earlier today, I saw this on Facebook:
Many disabled women I have linked up with today welcome the choice of being able to use a women’s only train carriage at night.
It’s not all about able bodied women’s choices who have been largely dismissing the idea today.
It got me thinking about my own views on women-only train carriages.
As a woman, I like the idea of women-only train carriages being available for women to use late at night. I think that this might reduce sexual assaults, groping, or insults aimed at women by men on trains late at night.
However, as a physically disabled woman, women-only train carriages wouldn’t help me personally at all. My disability means that I can’t use public transport independently. So I rarely use trains as it is. However, women-only train carriages would restrict me even further as they would mean that I wouldn’t be able to use a train late at night with my father, brother or future boyfriend without another woman present as well. I need the help of whoever is with me to get on and off a train and would find it extremely difficult to stand waiting for a man if he was in a separate carriage.
I have heard that women-only carriages would not replace mixed carriages, but would be available for women who chose to use them. So if I was on a train with a man and I had to sit in a mixed carriage with him because I needed his help, I would have to sit with other men who may be drunk late at night and who may make me feel uncomfortable anyway.
If I was not disabled and didn’t need the help of my companions on a train I may, at times, choose to use a women-only train carriage, even if I was travelling with men I know, because as a woman I don’t like the idea of drunk men who I don’t know staring at me, insulting me or worse on a train.
As things are, for me personally as a disabled woman, the choice to use women-only train carriages would not change anything, as it would not even be open to me unless the people I knew who were travelling with me on the train late at night were also women.
So for me personally, women-only train carriages would be more of a restriction to who I was able to travel with on a train late at night than anything else.
Do you have any thoughts on this idea, readers?
Same Difference 
I think to have the choice is important as like in India it’s not forced on you but some women prefer to travel with the same sex and personally I don’t see a problem with that
My daughter often travels at night from London home on trains that start off ok but then go on to deteriorate with foul swearing and intimidation further down the line
So I think in cases like her she should have a choice after all she is paying £500 per month for a service that is very overcrowded and has to often sit on the floor so any improvement in travel on personal safety grounds I think women overall would welcome it
Hi Mike, from what I’ve read – the report given on Labour list – he would give an all women group the right to choose whether women would like to have all women carriages. It appears Corbyn sees himself/his party as enabling the relevant groups to have the power to make, presumably informed, decisions. I guess that’s bottom-down thinking rather than top-down – no wonder so many parliamentarians and corporate sponsors are so fervent to insure he’s not elected labour party leader.
I think you might do better reporting what Corbyn actually said and not the twaddle the mainstream media are interpreting it as
When I was a student, in London, the tube used to have 2 staff – driver & guard, who was in the last carriage, and was in contact with the driver and the control centre through radio. If travelling late I would always sit in there, as did many other young women, the elderly, etc.
I think there is a case for the return of the guard and of station staff on the tube & main lines, to make travel safer at all times of the day & night for everyone. Many have stopped using public transport because of real & perceived personal safety concerns.
I “get” the arguments being trotted out in the “anti” Corbyn camps that we need a better society, blah blah blah, of course that’s not wrong. But how long are we expected to wait? I mean, I was starting my adult working life 45 years ago when the equal pay act was enacted, still waiting for that to happen. Ditto all the Equality & Diversity laws, they have actually made a radical difference but they haven’t and never will provide 100% compliance. So too for womens’ safety. Women only carriages would be welcome, I think, because having had some unpleasant experiences (as all women have, usually) I think we should have appropriate safeguards on place because it’s a price worth paying. If any man travelling on public transport faced the same degree of worry and actual assaults, the money would be found. The most disgusting thing I heard one woman saying today was
“well if you don’t sit in the womans carriage, would you be seen as asking for it, like wearing a short skirt?
Listen to yourself, woman!!!!! Same for the comment above worrying about “if I was with a male companion……” well if you was with a male companion, you probably wouldn’t need worry about sexual assault on the railway!
All you have to say is – give it a try. You’re not forced to sit there. If is works, great. If not, what have we lost? I think we need to step away from those who are burbling on about “ghettoisation of women” as I doubt many saying such things actually do travel by public transport any time of day.
PS When Golda Meyer was prime minister of Israel, in response to a surge in petty crime, but especially sex crimes, she came up with a brilliant idea. She introduced a MALE curfew, and men had to be off the street by 9pm. Crime plummeted, the evening streets were full of women, socialising, going to cafes and restaurants, enjoying the freedom to wander, talking with friends, visiting, etc. It didn’t last long, but it did show what happens when you put women in charge -we see the problem and the solution quite clearly.
Reblogged this on perfectlyfadeddelusions.
Opinion is divided with some feminists supporting it and others saying it’s putting blame on women for assault. I am with the latter.